O sucesso passado é um perigo, porque cria uma nova realidade

E Joe Calloway em "Becoming a Category of One" continua a merecer ser lido.
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Recordando o postal de ontem "Reflexão sobre a competitividade, com ou sem euro" e aquele momento em que a taxa de esemprego chegou aos 3,9%, julgo que estes trechos explicam parte do que aconteceu:

"Success Means You Know What Used to Work (Moi ici: Julgo que há uma frase de Hayek neste mesmo sentido)
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The way you used to do it won ’ t work much longer. It ’ s not because you ’ re necessarily doing anything wrong, it ’ s just that everything about the way we do business is changing. It ’ s changing now, as you read this. And it ’ s going to keep on changing. (Moi ici: Basta olhar para os jornais para ver essa mudança. Por exemplo, o esboroar do modelo de negócio da Nespresso em "Nespresso brews plans to see off rivals", uma alteração local que muda uma certa paisagem competitiva "London Tube plans grocery services at stations". BTW, acho estranho que só agora é que o Tube se tenha lembrado desta possibilidade. Como dizem os especialistas do retalho "Location, location, location")
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It ’ s become a challenge to even defi ne what business you ’ re in anymore.
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New competitors are everywhere for everybody.
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Past Success Is the EnemyPast success can be, and usually is, the enemy of future success. This is a rule that I live by in my own business. What it means is simply that if you have a track record of past success, and you are
good at what you do, then I would say two things to you.
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you have put yourself in a very dangerous position. When companies or individuals become successful, they inevitably experience the pull of an almost irresistible force — complacency. The greatest danger of past success is that you might relax into thinking that you “ know how this business works. ” Every successful company must be on guard against the threat of complacency. You have to create a sense of urgency every day in every thing you do.
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if you ’ re successful, that means you know what used to work . If you ’ re successful, that means that you can compete and win in markets that no longer exist . They ’ re gone. The game starts over today and it will start over again tomorrow. ”(Moi ici: Não há direitos adquiridos, tudo está sempre em questão)
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don ’ t make assumptions about what will work tomorrow based on what worked yesterday, especially in the area of processes, procedures, strategies, and operations.
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Prosperity can be very dangerous for any company. It can lead you to believe that you ’ ve cracked the code, or “ figured this business out, ” or that you “ know how this business works. ”
No. You know how it used to work. To stop and relax for more than a brief moment is one of the most dangerous things you can do in a marketplace that changes constantly."

E, para terminar, relacionando com o desempenho das empresas que, perante a derrocada do mercado interno, acordaram, nos últimos anos, para a necessidade de exportarem, este trecho:

"Looking back over my own career, it ’ s clear that some of the most significant periods of progress that I experienced were caused by what seemed at the time like crisis, not opportunity.
I had fallen prey to relaxing because my business was experiencing success and customers were happy, and I could see absolutely no reason to do anything other than what was already working. It was as if someone had installed one of those invisible fences around me, like the ones you would use to train your pet not to wander away from your yard. My invisible fence was made up of the boundaries that complacency had erected in my mind. I thought I was safe because nothing was changing."

Claro, o truque é este:

"learn to create their own sense of urgency without waiting for a crisis to come down the road and shake them out of complacency.
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Far from resisting change, they are running with change to create their own future (Moi ici: Abraçar a mudança, em vez de lhe resistir) rather than leave it to chance and circumstances that are out of their control."

E recordando a artesã:

"The product may not change, but the reasons people buy the product will change. Nothing stays the same.
Success Creates a New Reality
The very act of becoming successful demands that you change."

.A vida das empresas é este eterno ir e vir de estratégias, como as ondas numa praia... como aprendi com Beinhocker:

“We discovered that there is no one best strategy; rather, the evolutionary process creates an ecosystem of strategies – an ecosystem that changes over time in Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction.”